International border meeting Forum Tomizza, which this year takes place with the theme Orient Express. The photo is from Koper. Photo: STA
With Forum Tomizza on the Orient Express
For the 27th year in a row, the international border meetings Forum Tomizza connect Koper, Trieste and Umag. This year’s Orient Express theme deals with both Orientalism and the European attitude towards the East. The festival starts today and will conclude on Saturday. More than thirty participants from many countries came to the meeting.
It was in 1954 Fulvio Tomizzaaged 19, went from Trieste to Belgrade to study at the then Academy of Dramatic Arts. From Sežana, he traveled with the Orient Express. When he arrived in Belgrade, there was a massive celebration of the adoption of the London agreement. The document, which is still valid, settled the hitherto unsettled issue of the demarcation line between Italy and the former Yugoslavia, which had remained open since the end of World War II military operations.
There was tension, anticipation, excitement in the air. Fulvio Tomizza played joy, but at the same time he was worried. The decision on the border was not easy for him. Istria was his place of freedom, his home. He later wrote: “I identify with the border (“M’identifico con la frontiera.“).
In the cities of Fulvio Tomizze
Thus, Forum Tomizza also identifies with the border, not with one or the other side of the border, but with the border as a meeting point. For the twenty-seventh time in a row this year (between May 27 and 30), it will take place, as always, in Koper, Trieste and Umag. In the cities of Fulvio Tomizze. It is always a mix of talks, exhibitions, guided tours of Koper by Fulvio Tomizza, poetry readings – Poets on the road – which used to take place in the Koper gardens, accompanied by performances and concerts.
Above all, there is a symposium in each of the three host cities, this year with the title Orient Express. Irena Urbič and Neven Ušumovićthe driving forces of the forum, found the topic in a mix of circumstances. In Fulvio Tomizza’s autofiction novel The tree of dreamsfrom where the introductory story, in today’s world crisis, is also in the book Ervin Hladnik Milharčič Journey to the Orientbut above all in one of the fundamental works of postcolonial theory Orientalism by Edward W. Saidliterary critic and activist (1935–2003). As always, this year the forum opens a topical discussion on a series of burning questions. From our border space to the global constellation of power, in which the question of the relationship between the West and the East after the Cold War era is once again gaining decisive weight. Things are unfolding like lightning: we are engulfed by a new wave of xenophobia and threat rhetoric from near and far Easterners, we are frightened by their labor, economic or military power. More and more local authorities are also calling for stricter borders with their neighbors from the East.
A new understanding of Tomizza
Fulvio Tomizza’s literary work is a history of the frontier world during the Cold War. His works stem from a careful listening and understanding of the “Eastern question”. This year’s theme thus offers an opportunity for a new understanding of his life definitions and literary creation. This year, the topic of the international meeting will be discussed first in Trieste Franco Juri, Matjaž Manček, Marta Verginella, Lorena Fornasir and Gian Andrea Franchi. They will discuss in Koper Boštjan Videmšek, Andrei Nikolaidis, Elisa Copetti, Faris Kočan, Ahmed Burić and Alida Bremer. The latter presented the novel at the first event before the forum in Koper and the next day in Ljubljana Dreams and scenerywhich is in translation Urška P. Černe published by KUD AAC Zrakogled. This year’s topic will be discussed in Umag Lidija Dimkovska, Szabolcs Tolnai, Diego Marani, Iva Kosmos and Anja Zag Golob.
Annual new books or translations are also part of the Tomizza Forum. This year, he will be a longtime collaborator of the meeting Aljoša Pužar talked to Milan Rakovciwithout which there would be no Forum Tomizz, about the latest, once again trilingual and only seemingly tiny booklet of essays Hostaria Histria, namely in Trieste, Koper and Umag. In Umag there will also be a presentation of the translation of Fulvio Tomizza’s novel The tree of dreams. As always, the book is published by the Umag City Library. Its director is the driving force behind Forum Tomizza in Umag, Neven Ušumović, otherwise a writer and translator. This year he will also be a guest at Vilenica. Thanks to him, Croatia is of course ahead of Slovenia in the number of translations of Tomizz’s works. Each city has its own forum administrator. In Trieste, the Slovenian Club takes care of the forum, in Koper it is Irena Urbič, and all together, as they say, persistently drive this Istrian tricycle.
The forum always ends on Saturday in Matera, where Fulvio Tomizza is buried. Hi guys or welcome to the forum, as Milan Rakovec, the father of the forum, greets the attendees every year.
